


Ground zero and still no God

by Jemisard



Category: Stormwatch (Comics), The Losers (Comic)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:48:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jemisard/pseuds/Jemisard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A nuclear device of some kind detonates on the newly formed island of New Jerusalem. StormWatch go in to investigate the scene.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jackson King

“Give me information.”

Winter made an unhappy sound as they strode along the corridor. “We found him at ground zero. Hellstrike’s pretty sure he _is_ ground zero.”

“Post human eruption, or one of the nukes?” Fifty goddamn nuclear bombs and he had to worry if he’d brought one of them up into Skywatch.

The Russian shrugged. “No way to tell. He’s in medical, unconscious. Multiple bullet wounds. He might not survive surgery.”

“He’s the only survivor?”

“Definitely. The explosion killed everything that might have been there.” The doors of the medical section swept open with a thought from Jackson. Inside, doctors worked to stabilise the survivor, machines sounding alarms and warnings, the information feeding from them into Jackson’s interface units.

The fact the medical team were having to work in full haz-mat wasn’t making things any easier for the stress levels. The guest was pouring off radiation like a reactor in meltdown, but his skin was unblemished from the poison, his hair healthily attached to his scalp and his tan only faded from blood loss.

“Do we have a name yet?”

That wasn’t aimed at Winter, who had moved off to the side to watch.

“Not yet,” Christine admitted. “He doesn’t match any of the defection records we have from the whole mess. I’ll let you know once we have an ID on him. What are we reporting, officially?”

Jackson watched as the surgeon managed to extract one of the bullets and started closing up the entry hole in his upper chest. “Nothing to report. If he pulls through, I’ll reconsider.”

“We’re required to confirm post human involvement.”

Radiation levels continued to sink slowly.

“Jackson?”

“Not yet. He’s not in a state to give any information and the threat’s contained.” If there was a threat from him. Jackson knew better than to judge by appearance, but they’d be lucky if he pulled through. He wasn’t likely to be making escape attempts to go and blow up more islands. “If he survives, we’ll notify the UN.”

“Understood.” Christine cut the line and Jackson turned his attention briefly to their guest and on to Winter.

Winter looked up. “I’m staying.”

“Good.” There wasn’t much more to say. “Stay in touch with your team groundside.”

He left to the sound of another bullet being dropped into a kidney dish.

*~*~*

“The explosion started in the oil rig.”

Hellstrike gestured to the centre of the hologram, projecting the map of the island before the nuke had gone off. “I can’t get you more than that, but I’m sure it was inside the old rig.”

“And the rig was the only structure on the island.” Jackson leaned back into his seat. “So we don’t have anything more than we did to begin with.”

Hellstrike gave a tiny shrug. “I’m really sorry, but there’s just nothing there to recreate the scene with. I’m bloody good, but I can’t work that miracle. Did medical give you anything?”

“Not much outside what we already knew. He’s stable at the moment, but he’s not responding well to treatment.”

“New physiology?” That from Fuji.

“More like he’s not trying,” Winter answered. “If he caused the explosion, he probably felt awful about it. If he didn’t cause it...”

If he didn’t cause it, he had been as good as hugging a nuclear device when it detonated and it took a very _special_ mind set to do that. Jackson pinched the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. Christine’s taken the information medical’s given us and is running it through her systems. Someone knows who this guy is. Someone’s been patching him up from bullets and knives for the last ten years.”

Someone had removed a bullet from his leg no more than a month ago.

“We do know he’s not one of the defectors. We’ve got files on everyone who defected during this mess and he doesn’t match any of them.” Hellstrike brought up the rows of photos, of all those believed lost in the explosion.

“So someone else had got in there. He can’t have been alone. There must have been a small strike team that managed to get in.”

The implication was vaguely nauseating. There had been a threat to detonate one of the hidden bombs if anyone tried to fuck with the island, but someone had done just that, and done it without getting caught.

“Goddammit, I want to know what happened on that island,” Jackson growled.

“Well, I can’t give you that,” Christine grinned from the doorway. “But I can give our guest a name.”

The map collapsed and instead projected a photo of their mystery man, in uniform and looking years younger.

Sergeant Carlos Alvarez, US Army Special Forces.

Deceased as of six years ago.

“Sunnuva bitch,” Hellstrike said.


	2. Pooch

“Fucking useless ‘superheroes’ crawling over the place. Where the fuck were they when the place was a threat?!”

“On their space station.”

“On their goddamn space station letting us grunts do the hard work!” Jensen drained his bottle and set it down hard on the coffee table. “Some fucking heroes.”

Jensen’s outburst barely drew any attention from the inhabitants of the bar. One drunk who didn’t seem to have moved from the night before looked at them before his head dropped back to his glass.

“If they’d done their _jobs_ in the first place, then, then...”

Pooch dropped his hand on Jensen’s shoulder as the younger man hunched in on himself again. “It weren’t your fault.”

“Fucking Aisha! What the hell, man? We were _friends_! I thought we were friends. Or not on stabby terms. She’s a low, scum sucking troll. She’s, she’s a _Roque_.”

Pooch gestured for another round.

“She didn’t even need to do it. She didn’t have to shoot us. What did we ever do to her? I mean, Clay, okay, I get wanting to shoot Clay, I do, but...”

There were no tears. Just a long silence, Jensen’s head bowed and eyes closed.

“Neither was your fault.”

“Survivor’s guilt,” Jensen muttered, voice heavy and bitter.

“You hate labels.”

“Yeah, I know.” He started the new drink with gusto.

When Jensen’s phone buzzed, Pooch glanced to the pocket. “Who knows we’re alive?”

“You, me, Jo, the girls, Bethy and Jess.” He lifted his head up slower this time. The booze was starting to get to him.

“So who messaged your phone?”

“Jess. Probably. She told me she’s sorry about Clay and Cougs. Beth’s upset about _Tio Kitty_.”

Only Beth got away with calling him that. Pooch didn’t know the story behind it.

“So no one. Probably an email.”

Pooch gave up and dug his hand into Jensen’s jacket pocket, pulling out the phone and flicking it open. “Who the hell is Pop Goes the Weasel?”

Jensen pinwheeled himself straight off the barstool, grabbing at the phone with wide eyed horror. “No, no, no, this cannot be happening.”

“Jay?”

“No.” Sitting on the floor of the bar, Jensen flipped rapidly through the screen, getting paler and paler.

“Corporal, talk to me,” Pooch barked.

It snapped Jensen out of his fugue. “Shit. Someone’s accessed our records. Someone’s _digging_ into our records, like I would.”

“Hacking the system.”

Jensen shrugged. “Can’t tell. Need my laptop. But I can tell you where they are, give me a moment...”

Pooch settled the bill while Jensen peered at his screen through his glasses.

“What the...”

“What?”

“It’s Cougar.” Jensen looked up, confused. “They’re in _Cougar’s_ file.”

*~*~*

Back at the hotel, Pooch made Jensen drink some coffee and eat some solid food before crawling into the depths of whatever cyberworld he was delving for information.

“Baby, you’re not meant to be giving it up to other people,” Jensen whined at the laptop. He’d conceded to keeping his jeans on, though frankly, if it got them better results, Pooch didn’t care if Jensen wanted to hack while wearing nothing but a sock on his nose.

“Aw, I know, you couldn’t help it. He’s a sweet touch, he is, but I can see him. Look at all the nasty things he’s done to you. Tracers, sweepers, all that raking and digging and plundering.”

“Jensen, really?”

“Shut up, man, I work how I work. You gotta sweet talk a pretty system like this, however easy she is.”

“That’s our government’s secure database you’re talking about.”

“I know that.” Jensen pulled a face, peering over his glasses as sweat made them slide down his nose. His fingers continued to fly over the keyboard. “She’s easy, but you still gotta treat her right.”

“I’m going to go and make sure we’re clear.” It was better than listening to Jensen dirty talking the computer.

Jensen waved him off, focused on the machine. Pooch shut the door, sighing and setting off to do and quick once over the hotel and street. If someone was in their files, then someone could be nearby, closing in.

Not for the first time, he wished Clay was there. Clay had a plan for everything and if anything else came up, he improvised better than any stand up comedy night.

Clay would’ve known what to do before now. But Pooch didn’t.

He came back to find Jensen down to shorts and a sombrero that Pooch wasn’t sure he’d owned before he left. Rather than question it, he pushed his thoughts aside and grabbed a shower.

Even the nights didn’t seem to get that cool. When he got out of the shower, Jensen was sitting still, the sombrero abandoned to the side and the only light coming from the open window.

The laptop battery had been pulled.

“Jensen?”

“I don’t know.” The younger man looked down at the laptop and then out to the window. “Shit man, I don’t know.”

“Were you caught?”

“No. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I don’t think so. I found a trace back, so I followed it. Hit some pretty serious coding, I don’t mean like the government, I mean serious, like Goliath.”

“Or Max.”

“Or Max. Max is fucking dead though. Dead and dead and atomic dust. It’s not Max.”

“Okay. So what was it?”

Jensen shook his head. “I- can’t be sure.”

“But you think you know.” He pushed gently. “Who was it?”

“StormWatch.” He tilted his face up to Pooch and the look in his gaze was a god awful mix of shock and dim hope. “StormWatch went to the blast site and investigated. Then they went into the database and pulled up Cougar’s file and started digging into it.”

“Jensen it doesn’t-”

“How did they know to look for his file, Pooch?”

“-he was holding the nuke, he’s not-”

“How did they know he was there?”

The question stretched the silence between them.

“We can’t break into Skywatch to find out. You know we can’t do that. It’s a _space station_.”


	3. Christine Trelane

“Cheeky little bastard!”

There was brief silence and an aborted giggle from elsewhere in the control room as Christine brought up the security breach on her screen.

No one was reckless enough to try and hack Skywatch. It just wasn’t done. Christine wasn’t good; she was the best. People didn’t try and hack Skywatch and they certainly didn’t try and hack through her defence system.

But some cheeky bastard was not only trying, but was making fairly good inroads into the system.

She studied what he was doing for a long moment, peering through her glasses at the scrolling text. He wasn’t going to get in. That was never a question. She was the best security in the world and with all the advantages of her system, he was never going to get much further than he had.

But he’d tried and he’d made a damn good effort of it.

She tapped in a few commands, watching with some satisfaction as her hacker realised he’d been made and pulled his system.

“Is it serious?”

She touched her hand to her ear piece, pushing hair aside to do so. “No, it’s not serious. I’ve taken care of it.”

Jackson’s voice sounded world weary. “Were they in the system?”

“No.” The question made her pride prickle slightly, even though she knew he had to ask. “They were good, but not that good.”

“Do whatever you need to, find out who or what that was. I don’t want them coming back and making a mess.” He held back the sigh she knew he wanted to let out. “We’re only just starting to made serious headway into the last mess we were left with.”

“You don’t need to tell me that.” The virtualisation of Bendix’s systems was a near permanent reminder of how much of a mess they’d been left to clean up. “I’ve got it, don’t worry about it. You have bigger issues.”

Bigger issues. The nuke site of New Jerusalem. They’d officially finished their investigation and submitted their findings. Nuclear device set off inside the rig itself, probably one of the very weapons that had been intended for use on the civilian population of the world. It was a grim finding and worse, they hadn’t been able to say if it was intentional or an accident.

Hellstrike thought the presence of Sergeant Alvarez (still officially deceased for now) at ground zero suggested deliberate detonation. Suicide bomber.

Fuji had pointed out that he may have been attempting to defuse the weapon when it went off. Whether that made him one of Max’s or not, it was a possibility.

Winter had stayed quiet, keeping his opinion to himself.

Christine wasn’t sure what to think. Alvarez was a sniper, an exceptional one from his service record, with a rocky relationship with authority. Admittedly, six years could change a lot, but she couldn’t see him having the skills to try defusing a nuclear device.

“How is he?” It was a bit of a stall, but it seemed like she didn’t get a lot of chances to talk to Jackson recently, so she’d taken what excuses she found.

“Alive. Stable. Expected to pull through. I’ve left Black on his security detail until we know what sort of post-human abilities he’s manifesting. Radiation levels are decreasing.”

“Short half life,” Christine thought aloud.

“Luckily. If he can soak up environmental radiation like that and break it down...”

Effective nuclear clean up. It was a hell of a thought.

If he survived his gunshots.

If he wasn’t a madman, bent to Max’s cause.

She couldn’t really string the conversation out any longer. They both had too much that needed doing. “I’ll see you tonight. Barring any more disasters.”

“Don’t jinx it,” he murmured fondly, and then the line was closed.

Christine watched the lines of code for a few moments longer before turning back to her work.

*~*~*

The day that Alvarez regained consciousness, Christine fended off another break in to the system. It cut off before she had a chance to catch them, but the signal had come from somewhere in Argentina before vanishing.

She was sure that it was all connected, New Jerusalem, Alvarez, the hacker that kept poking and prodding at the defences to try and get in, but she didn’t have any proof. Alvarez’s team–including the tech specialist, a known hacker–were all listed as KIA, but given that he was sitting in their medical unit, she had to assume the others had made it out as well.

Had they been there with him? If they had been, how did the get out? Assumedly, they came out the same way they got in, but they still had no idea what that was. The schematics had provided no clues and all physical evidence had been destroyed. It was frustrating.

Three days later, another attack hit the system, more sophisticated than the last two. It was clearly a test, to see what the system would do, how she would react. She woke up when the alarm in her room started blaring, shocking her from sleep. Next to her, Jackson was upright and grabbing for his implants until her terminal sprung to life, flashing an unhelpful ‘server security breach’ warning on the monitor.

If she’d been awake when it happened, maybe she could have grabbed him in action, but by the time she got to the terminal, he was gone again, alerted to the fact he’d been caught.

She could say it had started in Bolivia this time. They were moving North, up the continent. She started scanning protocols for the next incoming attack, expected from Colombia if he kept heading back towards the States.

Going back to sleep took a while for both of them, but in their line of work, they had to take whatever sleep they could get.

In the morning, she cleared a meeting with Alvarez. He was no longer radioactive and was comfortably installed in a secure room with full medical attendance. He hadn’t been violent, though being cuffed to his bed probably deterred him from trying.

Winter was on guard when she got there. She knew Prime were pulling shifts, but it was almost like Winter hadn’t moved since he first got there, immovable and unchanging. He met her eyes as she approached. “Are you sure about this?”

“No, but I can’t think of any better options. The doctor says there’s no reason he _can’t_ speak, so maybe he just needs some motivating.”

“And you think you can motivate him.” The doubt was heavy in his tone, even if he didn’t give it words.

“I hope I can.” Since waking, Alvarez hadn’t said a word, hadn’t made a noise. He had tried to free himself once or twice, but had otherwise remained indifferent to his surrounds and completely ignored people.

The doctors said he was recovering well physically.

Christine wasn’t a doctor, but she couldn’t help but think that his silence probably had less to do with ability and more to do with whatever lead him to sit with a nuclear device as it detonated.

Winter didn’t follow her as she went into the cell, watching through the transparent door.

Alvarez lifted his gaze to look at her. In another life, she supposed he would be a handsome man, dark eyes, long dark hair, tanned skin, but there was a weariness to him that drained the life and vitality from his face and body.

“Hello, Sergeant. I’m afraid I don’t know what form of address you prefer.” She set down her notes on the side table. “I know that a couple of the doctors have tried speaking to you, but you didn’t seem interested in talking to them. I’m not a doctor. My name is Christine Trelane, I’m the head of cybersecurity and technology development here on Skywatch and I’m not here to ask you about the explosion.”

She looked up, careful not to show her relief that Alvarez was actually watching her. There was a degree of curiousity in his eyes even.

“I’m here because someone has been trying to break into my system, Sergeant. Someone with a lot of skills who is very careful about not getting caught by me. He hasn’t got in and he’s not going to, but he’s very determined and I think you might know who he is.”

The man raised an eyebrow and looked away, staring at the wall again.

“Corporal Jacob Jensen.”

His face didn’t react to the name.

“You survived the helicopter crash in Afghanistan. I don’t see why he couldn’t have.”

His eyes closed again, shutting out her words, shutting out _her_.

Bad topic.

Did his abilities let him survive that crash? Maybe he was the only survivor twice now.

“We want to help you. _I_ want to help you. I don’t think what happened was your fault.”

He didn’t open his eyes. She’d hit the wall again.

“All right. I’ll come back later. But I _will_ be back. You can’t get rid of me completely just by staying silent.” She stood up and knocked for Winter to let her out again, taking her files with her.

“He looked at you.”

She supposed that was meant to be encouraging, from Winter. “He shut down when I asked him about the crash in Afghanistan.”

“Does the same when asked about New Jerusalem. Or Colonel Clay or Captain Roque.”

“He could have survived that crash by virtue of his abilities.”

“Maybe.” Winter looked back to the door. “I doubt it. There would have been shrapnel and fire and he hasn’t shown any ability to absorb those.”

She hummed. It was true, he had scars from old injuries. Bullets and lacerations mostly, and a burn mark over one forearm that was probably not old enough to be a childhood accident.

“He didn’t expect to survive that blast. He didn’t _want_ to.”

Christine wasn’t tactless enough to ask how Winter knew that. “If he doesn’t start talking, we might have to try more extreme results. Right now, he’s still a huge threat, because we don’t know what happened down there and how much was him.”

“He’s not going to talk. We have nothing to say that interests him enough.”

“No. I guess not. Have you told that to the Weatherman?”

Winter shook his head slightly.

“I’ll do it. This isn’t going to be good for anyone.”

*~*~*

Christine sat outside, watching through the cell’s clear frontage and through the readings on her machines.

Jackson sat in the room. Alvarez was sitting up, wrists still cuffed to the bed but eyes closed and body relaxed for the time being.

“Sergeant Alvarez, I know you can hear me and understand. I am Jackson King, the current Weatherman of StormWatch. That means I am in charge. I am in charge of working out what happened on New Jerusalem and I am in charge of containing any post-human activities. You are currently my number one problem in both these regards.”

Alvarez opened his eyes and glanced to Jackson. If Christine had to hazard what he was thinking, it was ‘good’.

“You are a post-human. That concerns me, because we don’t know what you can do. You are also the only survivor of New Jerusalem, which means you are the only chance to find out what happened. I need you to start talking and tell us what happened down there. What happened with _Max_.”

Heart rate increase, but Alvarez just closed his eyes again.

Jackson got the same readings, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose. “I really didn’t want to have to do it this way, Sergeant.”

Christine brought up the neural readings as Jackson closed his eyes, breathed in and exhaled heavily, staring intently at Alvarez.

Jackson’s reading spiked. Christine’s heart rate spiked with it.

Then it all went off the chart.

Jackson was the one who screamed. He screamed and clutched his hands over his ears as though to cut out whatever he had read across Alvarez’s mind. Alvarez threw himself against his restraints, kicking out violently. His eyes was squeezed so tight his brow was pinched white and he didn’t let up, throwing himself forwards over and over again, ripping stitches and causing bright red blooms of blood over his hospital gown.

But he never made a sound, even as Winter dragged Jackson out and let the medics in to sedate the thrashing Sergeant and check that he hadn’t done himself serious damage with his fighting.

Christine was rushing to Jackson’s side, taking his hand and gripping it tightly. “Jackson? Come back, you’re okay. Listen to me and come back.”

He blinked once, mechanically, then again with more ease as his eyes started to focus on her face. “Chris?”

“Yeah, that’s me.” She ran a hand over his shaved head fondly. “Must’ve been something pretty awful in there.”

Jackson swallowed hard. “Screaming. So much screaming. A roar, like... fire? And screaming.” His voice was soft and lost, frighteningly childlike.

“Who was screaming? The people in the rig?”

“No. Children. Children screaming. And it doesn’t stop.”

She looked back up to the cell, where the medics were working on Alvarez.

“What children,” Winter asked softly.

“I don’t know,” Christine replied. “But I bet I know someone who does. I think it’s time Skywatch’s unbreakable security had a little slip.”


	4. Jensen

“Baby, you are the best, you are absolutely the best, you are giving it up so good!”

On screen, the lines of code shifted and the server blossomed under Jensen’s touch, opening up to his scrutiny.

StormWatch was apparently slightly less impregnable than originally believed. Jensen still wasn’t going to go barging around in case he tripped one of the alarms that he had so far managed to avoid.

It had taken him days to find a way in. It was a tiny piece of coding error, probably made after hours of writing security protocol. But it was an in and he was taking it, playing red light/green light the whole way.

By the time he was done, StormWatch had two new janitorial staff and he and Pooch had three days to get themselves to the transport site to get up SkyWatch.

He hadn’t quite worked out anything past that yet, but desperation was the mother of invention, so with any luck, he’d think of something before they got made and had to try and escape from the highly militarised, international space station watchdogs. That was just details, this, this was a concrete step in the right direction.

“Jensen, what the fuck, man?”

“What?” He looked down at himself and back up. “I bought them from a street vendor named _Elvira_.”

“They’re My Little Pony shorts!”

“Don’t you diss Rainbow Dash, man. You can’t begin to understand the awesomeness.”

"Doesn't matter." Jake wasn't sure if Pooch was saying that to him or to himself. He suspected the latter. "Can you get us in?"

Jake leaned forward, pointing a finger at Pooch and looking over the rims of his glasses at him. "No matter what the movies say, getting into a highly classified, security conscious space station is not actually that easy."

"But you're brilliant as the sun, JJ, and you've got us in, right?"

"Damn skippy I have," Jake beamed. "In like Cougs on a hen's... night." The last word took a hard exhale to get out as his brain caught up and twisted his heart in his chest. "Shit."

"Hey, we're doing this for Cougar, right?" Pooch's hand landed on his shoulder and squeezed. "Because you _know_ they've got him up there."

"Yeah. Shit, man, yeah." Jake took a steadying breath and nodded, firmly. "Because only for Cougar would I hack Skywatch and falsify their records to have two additional janitorial staff added." That bubble was back in his chest, reminding him that yes, he was _that_ fucking good and life was that fucking good, because they were going to go and save Cougar because Cougar was _not allowed to be dead_.

Not now that his hopes were up. Fucker wasn't allowed to do that to him.

"We got identities?"

It was clearly not the first time Pooch had asked. "Um, yeah, sure do. You're Joey Campbell and I'm Jesse Miller. I've got a contact making a dead drop of the passports we'll need and security papers, paid for courtesy of Goliath Enterprises, and we just need to turn up and not announce that we're lying."

"What then?"

Jake shrugged. "We've got three days to figure it out. I'll think of something."

*~*~*

"I haven't actually thought of anything," Jake told Pooch as they got dressed in their coveralls.

Pooch's horrified look wasn't very reassuring. "You said–"

"Yeah, I know what I said. I said I'd come up with something, but I was scared if I said I hadn't thought of something, you'd refuse to get in the transport."

"Damn right I would've refused to get in the transport," Pooch hissed. "I have a wife. A wife and two baby girls I'd really like to go home to!"

A guy looked over at them and laughed. "It's not that bad, trust me. First time in space, huh?"

"Yeah," Jake agreed, stepping in front of Pooch and offering his hand. "I'm Jesse, that's Joey. Guess you get used to the whole 'in space' thing but it's a sort of big deal the first day, you know? And he's scared of heights. Not that we can 'fall' off the station, you know?"

The guy laughed and shook his hand. "Frankie. I'm the head of the shift. Unofficially, but I've been here the longest. You boys got experience with clean up?"

"I used to work in a hospital in the Middle East and Joey was on shift in Bolivia, the internment camp." It covered the obvious bases. "Think we could do one of those, help him ease into it?"

"Whoa, it's not like that here. The people they keep in the cells here, we don't go near them. They have machinery running _that_. And medical isn't safe for human staff. Not without containment suits."

"Whoa." He hadn't thought of that. His mind raced faster than his heart, trying to think of some way of getting a free rein through the halls.

"What sort of thing is going down that they need containment?"

Good man, Pooch. Buy him thinking time while Frankie talked about the different post-human conditions that would make medical unsafe for them poor humans.

Hallways. It was probably the best they could hope for. Jake had hoped to be in and out in a single shift, but maybe they'd have to come back, work a few days to try and work out where Cougar was. Or where his body was, not that Jake was allowing that thought. Because Cougar wasn't dead.

"–just a few days ago they had a blood spill, but the patient, he's radioactive, right? So no one's allowed in without containment suits until the blood is cleaned up again. One day, you might be ready to move up to that. If you two prove to be any good."

"Radioactive guy?!" Everything in Jake started screaming.

"Yeah. I don't know the details, we're just cleaners with really high security clearance, but not _that_ high. But there's a radioactive guy in medical right now."

Jake tried for nonchalance. "Well, that's pretty freaky. Anyway, I was thinking, maybe we could just work some hallways? I mean, halls are halls, right, even in space. And we can do hallways, everywhere has hallways, 'cause we both really need this job, Joey's got kids, I'm supporting my sister and niece after the deadbeat ran off..."

"We're all there," Frankie agreed. "Go on. I'll give you the halls for the lower half of the station. You won't need to do any of the rooms, just the halls. You do good with it, I'll see what we can do about getting you the hab levels."

"You, Frankie, are the man. Let no one tell you otherwise." Jake beamed at him and back at Pooch. "All ready, Joey?"

"Ready as I'll ever be, _Jesse_." Jake was not forgiven yet, but Jake didn't really care. He took the keys for the carts, clipped on his security tag with the name 'Miller, Jesse' and a radiation detection strip below it in case of hull or shield breaching and straightened himself up.

Frankie's passcard sat in his pocket, waiting for the right moment.

Mission: Here Kitty, Kitty was a go.

*~*~*

Jake was good for two floors worth of cleaning. He did his job, mopped, cleaned, dusted, did all the mundane, meaningless shit that he was 'employed' to do as they moved at a snail's pace through the halls. The smell of antiseptic and artificial lemon clung to their clothes and even the gloves weren't enough to keep his hands from feeling grimy after cleaning two levels of the space station.

But it was long enough for them to listen to people talking. On Skywatch as everywhere in the world, cleaning staff were part of the furniture. They had their clearance, had signed their non-disclosure forms and were promptly forgotten about.

Medical was two floors above where they were. With patience, they could naturally make their way up there, but Jake was scared they'd run out of shift, have to leave and come back and if they did that–

It wasn't acceptable. They were too close to let this slip through their fingers.

He pushed his cart into the elevator, waiting just long enough for Pooch to get his cart in before hitting the button for the floor with medical.

"Jake," Pooch hissed at him.

"No." The harsh snap didn't sound like him, but it was definitely him speaking. "I'm not losing him. Not now. Play cool." The doors opened and Jake stepped out, pushing the cart in front of him.

"JJ..." He heard the rattle of Pooch's cart chasing after him but he didn't slow down. He knew where he was going, even if he wasn't sure where it was. Play it cool, look confident. Jake had been faking it for years, and it had all been the dress rehearsal for this moment.

'MEDICAL SUITE' was stencilled over the doors.

"No unauthorised personnel' was written below it.

Jake slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled out the card he'd lifted from Frankie, swiping it over the access panel.

His heart paused for the time it took to flick from red to green and the doors to open. The next thump was painful, a tight press that didn't let go even when the blood was pumping again.

He pushed the cart in and promptly abandoned it to the side. He knew Pooch was there, breathing heavy and scrambling to pull his own cart to the side as Jake grabbed a bucket and mop and walked through the medical rooms.

It was like a science fiction set. Any other day, any other reason and jake would have been hardly able to contain himself. Diagrams of alien creature were hung on the walls, samples in jars that had come from nothing that evolved on Earth. The beds were supported by large, central pillars and overhung with machines and diagnostic tools, clean white lights flooding each one.

Each contained in a chamber which could be closed off if needed. If, for example, a man who was bleeding radiation was inside one of them.

A medical attendant looked up at him, but he kept walking, gave a slight nod and smile and the man seemed to accept that he was meant to be there.

'LABS' and 'PRIVATE ROOMS' were on the wall ahead. He followed the arrow to the right. The hall was not long, the fronting of each room to the hall was transparent.

All except one. That door was shut and the wall and door greyed. He put down the bucket and mop as he knelt by the door, pulling out his pda and pressing the leads to the case. "Come on, come on," he whispered to it. "Pooch, keep look out?"

"Am doing." Pooch set himself up, slowly mopping the floor in view of the attendant, just another cleaner doing his job.

The screen came to life. Jake started the decryption running, gaze flicking restlessly between the screen, Pooch and the door.

First number. Second number. Third number.

Pooch shifted his bucket further out and started swabbing a new section of floor.

Fourth number.

The door unlocked with a click and Jake was shoving it open, pulling the leads free and stepping into the room, his heart in his throat.

Cougar looked up, hair lank about his gaunt face, eyes dark and glittering from the shadowed pits of his eyesockets.

Cougar.

Looked up.

Whatever shock Cougar was feeling, which managed to bust that stillness on his face to be shown, it was nothing. It was nothing compared to the way that Jake's heart tried to rip out of his chest and throat.

He took a step forward and another and tripped over something, it must have been his heart. He didn't remember it falling out, but it must have, because his chest was hollow and he couldn't feel it beating anymore.

He hit the floor on his knees and then Cougar was there in front of him in stupid hospital scrubs and smelling of antiseptics and sterile water and that permanent warm leather scent he had that Jake got a noseful of because he reached and pulled and hugged Cougar close. He buried his face in his stomach and wrapped his arms around the top of his thighs and he shook with _something_ that he didn't have enough words for.

Cougar's calloused hands came to touch his head and just hold him there, so he guessed Cougar didn't have the words for it either.

"You bastard," Jake whispered against him.

Cougar held him tighter in return.


	5. Winter

Contrary to popular opinion, Nikolas was not a heartless man. Efficient, convicted, but not heartless and not cruel.

Which was why he had let things run as they would. The two imposters were posing no threat to staff or security, intent on their target. He admired the competence of their infiltration, their near seamless integration with the cleaning staff and easy movements as they moved through the assigned tasks. They had raised no alarm bells on their trip up through the station and into medical.

And it was also why he let the men have their movement together. It was a small kindness he could give them after what they had to have been through.

After what he knew Alvarez had been through.

He was not a heartless man, but he was still one with a job. He moved from the lab towards the private rooms, back into line of sight of Porteous. The soldier startled, moving to call to his friend until Nikolas brought his finger to his mouth to hush him. "Let them have this moment," he said softly. "We have been aware of you since before you came onto the station."

Porteous controlled his reaction admirably, jaw gritting tight but he nodded sharply.

"Good man. You're their senior officer?" He kept his voice low, to not rouse suspicions from the room.

"We're not in the Army anymore." Winter could just about hear the 'sir' being swallowed.

"No. But you're their senior officer." He had the tension about him, a man protecting not just his friends, but people he felt responsible for.

Porteous remained silent this time, glancing back towards the private rooms.

"Go and say hello." There was nowhere for the three of them to go.

"Pooch?"

Nikolas looked up as Jensen appeared in the doorway, the blonde going from relaxed to combat ready in the blink of an eye.

"It was a trap," Porteous stated flatly. "They've been watching us the whole time."

" _Winter, do you require backup?_ " Hellstrike's voice cut over the conversation, through the earpiece he wore.

He shook his head slightly, knowing they were watching on the cameras. He could keep this situation calmer with just him.

"Shit." Jensen didn't try and run or attack, just stepped back into the room he had come out from.

Winter nodded Porteous forwards to follow them in. Alvarez was sitting on the bed again, looking almost slight next to the towering hacker, who had planted himself protectively between Alvarez and the door.

Porteous went to stand next to his unit. Nikolas left the door open to help them feel less threatened.

It didn't really seem to be working.

"So, what now? You hand us over to our government to let them bury us again? Or maybe you want to pull out our brains to find out what we know?" Jensen edged closer to Alvarez, crowding him further back and away from Nikolas. "And what did you do to Cougs?"

"We saved his life." He tried to relax, falling to military rest. "We recovered him at ground zero of New Jerusalem, bleeding out from multiple gunshots. We brought him up here and stabilised him."

Jensen looked to Alvarez. "They hurt you, Cougs?"

The other man looked up briefly. Winter couldn't decipher the glance but Jensen apparently could, because he nodded and brought his hand up to rest on Alvarez's neck, under his ponytail. "You crazy mother fucker," Jensen whispered.

"How'd he survive," Porteous asked.

"He's a post-human. He absorbs and breaks down radiation."

"Accelerated half-life?"

Nikolas nodded. "He's breaking down caesium-137 at a rate of hours, not years. He also soaks up more radiation than normal."

"So the nuclear explosion did shit all to him because he was at ground zero, but the gunshots nearly finished him off." Jensen's arm had moved to wrap around Alvarez's shoulders, keeping him close.

Nikolas nodded, giving a slight shrug. "In short."

"And you guys... what? And where the fuck were you when Max was threatening to blow up bits of the world, huh?"

It was a frustration Nikolas often _felt_ , even if he didn't have the luxury of giving it voice. "We're still governed. Without obvious post-human involvement, we had to wait for clearance to act."

"That's fucking-"

"I _know_ ," he cut in. He felt it as a rumble in chest, the helpless anger at being forced to watch and wait. "That's the price of being legitimised, not vigilante."

"JJ, it's not his fault," Porteous reminded. "They at least saved Cougs."

"What now, though? What are you going to do to him? And why did you let us up here if you knew who we were?"

"Alvarez was the only person who knew what happened down there. And when Trelane realised the hacker in her systems was probably you, it was decided that allowing you to come to rescue your comrade was the best way of contacting you _and_ reestablishing contact between you and the Sergeant here."

"What does contact matter?" Porteous had shifted on his feet to put himself more fully into Nikolas' view. 

"Alvarez was at ground zero. He hasn't spoken since we recovered him and our telepath was forced out of his mind by the relentless screaming that fills his thoughts." He took a slow breath. "I think if anyone needs some friendly human contact, it is probably your friend there."

Jensen's eyes closed briefly and his arm went tighter on his friend.

"Yes, we want to know what happened. In New Jerusalem and to your team. But we are also still people. He needs you and this was the best way to bring you to him."

He stayed quiet, letting the men think on this. Porteous looked to Jensen. Jensen glanced to Alvarez and then back to Porteous in a clear stalemate. They didn't know what to make of this. They'd been out in the cold a long time.

Alvarez laid a hand on Jensen's arm, drawing the younger man's attention back to him. "Cougs?"

Nothing was said, but there was more communication in a held gaze and then Alvarez nodded.

Jensen looked to Nikolas. "Okay. I want some kind of protection for us, we get to stay together and we get some food and drinks. And I want to meet your head of security, because that is one programmer I _have_ to meet."

Mission accomplished. Nikolas nodded. "We can arrange that."

*~*~*

They went through a long night.

The interviews were done in the medical room, to keep observation on Alvarez's condition and injuries. They provided food and refreshment and in return, the got the full story.

The pass in Afghanistan. Max's betrayal. Years of running and hiding and endless betrayals until they reached New Jerusalem.

New Jerusalem. Another betrayal, their CO lost and Alvarez holding the nuke to let Jensen escape alive.

Nikolas could see the guilt of that decision like a shroud on Jensen's shoulders. Jensen had done the only thing possible, but that knowledge didn't make it any easier to have left a dying friend behind. 

When Alvarez fell asleep again, it was pillowed on Jensen's lap, the hacker's restless fingers tugging softly at the snarls in Alvarez's long hair while he filled in details about Max's conspiracy and power base. It gave Winter a feeling of vindication; he'd known that bringing the three of them back together would help all of them and those small touches were the proof of that to him.

Desperation and isolation had eroded the boundaries between them all. Porteous didn't so much as bat an eyelid at Alvarez sleeping on Jensen, nor Jensen's clear familiarity with Alvarez's preferred style for his hair, undoing small plaits and reweaving them while he talked to Christine.

Christine clearly did find slightly odd. Winter didn't know if it was possible for him to explain to her how not strange the three of them were.

_Winter. Outside._

He looked to the door, where Jackson had left some ten minutes earlier. He headed out, aware of Porteous' suspicious gaze on him until the door cut between them.

"Sir?"

Jackson looked tired. Winter didn't blame him, this whole mess had taken a lot of the Station's time and energy.

"What do you think?"

What did he think? He thought a lot of things, but giving voice to them was still difficult after years under Bendix, knowing what was best to say and what was just going to be ignored. "You don't mean if they're telling the truth. We have machines and your own telepathy for that. You think they're telling the truth."

"Do you?"

"Probably. As they know it, anyway. I do think none of them had any idea that Alvarez is post human. He didn't plan on leaving that island."

"It's a strange ability. If he'd been anywhere by ground zero, the blast would've killed him with the concussive force."

Winter nodded, able to see the irony. The man trying to die sat at the only place he couldn't be killed by the blast.

"He could make a huge difference at blast sites. Safe investigation, soaking up the radiation in contaminated areas, the reclamation possibilities are enormous."

Winter could hear the unspoken. Alvarez was Special Forces, he was a top of the line sniper and agent and if half the things that Jensen and Porteous said were true, all three of them had the skill set to be StormWatch agents. "You want to recruit them."

"Jensen's hacking impressed Christine. Porteous is a married man with kids and a skill set that's better suited to us than civilian employment."

"And the only way you'll get Alvarez is if Jensen and Porteous agree." Because Alvarez wasn't in a mental state to make decisions like that. He'd do what he thought was best for the team. "Permission to speak frankly?"

Jackson seemed surprised. "Of course."

"I thought we were trying to clean StormWatch up after Bendix, not pick up where he left off." He kept the anger out of his voice, but some of the disgust was there.

"I am nothing like Bendix." The words clearly hit Jackson hard. Good. "I'm trying to make this place work, for the greater good of the world."

Winter gritted his jaw. "You know Alvarez can't make a call like that. He's suicidal, he should be in care, not being pressured to sign up to StormWatch to keep his unit near him. They're all he has, you know if you get them to work here, he'll follow because he has nothing else and that's the sort of underhanded manipulation of a wounded soldier that I would expect from Bendix, not from who we're meant to be."

"Are we talking about Alvarez or you, Nik?" Jackson's face was softening with some kind of realisation which Winter resented.

"Don't pretend this is about me," he snapped. "What happened to me, happened. What's happening now is what matters. They've spent six years on the run from powerful organisations like ours. They've lost fingers, friends, allies and trust. Alvarez has lost _hope_ and you don't have the right to emotionally blackmail him into service with us. I thought we were the good guys, Jackson?"

Jackson watched Winter, silent for a few long moments. "Dismissed, Winter."

He wanted to punch Jackson in the face. Instead, he nodded sharply and headed straight back into the medical room.

He couldn't make the call of what would happen to them. But he could at least give everyone a visual reminder than he was on these men's side by staying with them.

*~*~*

Sometime around the eighteen hour mark, Jensen went to sleep and Christine called it an end to the interview for now. There was no point moving anyone; with Jensen and Alvarez sleeping like puppies in the medical bed and Pooch dozing in the visitor's chair it seemed better to just leave them as they were.

Winter swapped out for Fuji to go and get some rest himself, trusting nothing would be decided while Christine was sleeping. 

His dreams decided to take him back to joining StormWatch. Reliving that time, lying in a hospital bed in Afghanistan, listening to the groans of the dying and _knowing_ something was wrong with him, that the explosion should've done more damage, should've left him dying slowly from horrific burns and punctures rather than the first degree burns to the arms he had and the cuts that were closed with stitches instead of intensive surgeries.

The only difference in the dream was that he had seen Alvarez lying in the next bed, covered in blood and gunshots and crackling like a geiger counter.

Winter _really_ didn't want to examine the dream, so he got up a couple of hours early, trained until it time for his shift and went back to the medical suite.

Fuji was talking to Porteous about their families, mainly Porteous' two daughters and the things he had missed in their lives with being on the run. Jensen was still asleep, curled on Alvarez's lap in a ridiculously small ball for such a large man.

Winter nodded to all awake parties and took his post by the machines. The soft conversation from the other corner kept the room from silence and Winter felt no need to try and converse with them or with Alvarez.

He briefly caught the Sergeant's eye. Neither of them spoke, but Winter got a vague sense of gratitude in that look before Alvarez glanced away again.

Maybe he had a second post-human ability to communicate without actual words, spoken or thought.

Maybe he was spending too much time with Hellstrike if he was thinking rubbish like that.

The door sighed open and Jackson and Christine came in. Winter looked to Christine, trying to read off her what was about to happen.

She didn't look _unhappy_ , which was a start.

Porteous had Jensen awake and sitting up again, rubbing his eyes under his glasses as Jackson cleared his throat.

"Officially, you're all dead and have been for some time. There's a lot of people who don't want three men turning up from the dead following a nuclear crisis with allegations of corruption, treason, terrorism..."

"We didn't choose to get framed and blacklisted," Jensen snapped.

"I am aware of that, Corporal. I also know that we could have lost several major cities to nuclear weapons if not for you three. And your Colonel."

The recognition of Clay's part eased the knot in Winter's chest a bit. At the least, Jackson was recognising what had been risked and lost fixing a situation that never should have been allowed to happen in the first place.

"Look, I get that this makes great narrative, but can you cut the suspense and tell us what you're doing with us." Jensen had his arm around Alvarez again. "The last six years have been suspenseful enough for this fucking life time."

"New identities," Christine offered. "For you and your families. For your safety, not to cover up what happened to you, or what you did."

"And Cougs?" Porteous this time, moving close to his men.

"Will be put into our databanks. We have to know which post-humans are out there and what they can do, for their sake and ours." Christine looked to the man in question.

"Are you going to let him leave with us?"

Winter noticed a slight coil of tension in his own spine.

"Yes," Jackson said. "I won't pretend I don't want you three on our payroll, you'd be valuable assets, but it was pointed out that you need some time to readjust to not being on the run before you make life decisions."

Jackson's gaze met Winter's and he gave a brief, sharp nod.

Winter nodded back and let the coil relax.


	6. Cougar

Time did not heal all wounds.

The sun on his skin warmed deeper into him than it used to. The pale puckers of the healing gunshots stood out against his tanned skin, but he refused to put on more clothes and the new changes in his body meant he didn't have to worry about burning in the sun.

Next to him, Jake slathered on more sunscreen in a desperate attempt to stop himself cooking. Even sitting in the shade, the hacker would be red by the end of the beach visit. Cougar suspected he'd lose track of when to reapply his sunscreen like he usually did.

"I hate you," Jake grumbled. "I so much as look at the sun, I'm going to burn again. And there you are, sunning like an iguana while I turn into a lobster. You're not even going pink!"

He did go pink with heat still, but only the heat, not the UV.

Jake pulled his shirt back on, an obnoxious pink monstrosity with blue and yellow balloons over it. "I can hear you dissing my shirt, Cougs."

He snorted and tugged his hat back over his eyes. It wasn't _the_ hat. That hat was gone with their old lives. It had been less nuclear proof than Cougar himself.

It was the hat Jake had bought him when they settled here. It looked similar and it felt similar but it smelt like new leather and shampoo and sweat, not gun oil and smoke and years of accumulated grime.

It wasn't better or worse as a hat. It was just different.

"You're brooding."

He huffed and tucked his arms under his head.

"You were too. You were brooding again." Shade moved over him; he looked up to see Jake had moved over him, glasses barely staying on his nose.

He reached up and pushed Jake's glasses back up his face.

Jake smiled at him. "I'm going down to the water with the kids. Want to join us?"

He wrinkled his nose. Wet was okay, but salt water had never been his thing. 

"Fine, stay up here, bake." Jake's finger flicked the hat back down over his eyes and took off down the beach, calling out.

Cougar dozed in the sunlight.

A child screamed.

His eyes opened, but he looked to the beach, where Pooch and Jake were throwing Pooch's youngest back and forth between them in the water.

Time didn't heal all wounds.

He pushed himself up off the towel and went towards the screaming and laughing without looking back.


End file.
